limitations on rights are permissible. In its General Comment No 31: The Nature of the General Legal Obligations Imposed on State Parties to the Covenant, it used the notion of “the essence” of a human right and emphasized that restrictions on a right must never impair that essence. The question of core rights and the distinction between limiting and negating rights is discussed below in relation to the DARE case. THE CASES ON THE POLICE BANNING OF DEMONSTRATIONS IN HARARE Both the cases below were brought in to challenge the police order banning all public processions and demonstrations in the Central Business District of Harare. Case before Chigumba J Democratic Assembly for the Restoration & Empowerment (DARE) & Ors v The Commissioner of Police & Ors HH-554-16 In this case, the applicants, a political party, a political activist and chairperson of a national vendors union, a Harare residents association and a consortium of political parties formed to address the issue of electoral reform. The applicants had planned a series of peaceful demonstrations to air their grievances over a range of issues such as electoral reform and alleged police brutality. One applicant said that previous demonstrations mounted by the applicant had been peaceful except when the police had initiated violent attacks on the demonstrators. The applicants stated they had already notified the police about their impending demonstrations. On the other hand, the respondents maintained that previous marches by the applicants had been violent and had led to unspecified destruction of property and looting of shops and some persons had been physically injured. They argued that the ban on demonstrations was necessary to protect the public and even argued that “the two week prohibition is actually inadequate to guarantee safety and to ward off the threat of terrorism.” The applicants then filed an urgent chamber application challenging the validity of the statutory instrument. Chigumba J who heard this application issued a provisional order in favour of the applicants. The court decided that the issue for determination by the court was whether section 27 of the Public Order and Security Act violated the constitutional right to engage in peaceful demonstrations and whether any such violation fell within the limitations provided for in terms of section 86(2) of the Constitution. The court decided the matter simply on the basis that the police had failed to follow the procedures set out in section 27 and had thereby violated the applicants’ right to administrative justice in terms of section 68 of the Constitution, particularly the right to be heard before a decision is taken that affected them and the right to be given reasons for a decision that affected them. Before issuing a banning order the regulating authority had to formulate reasonable grounds for its belief that using the powers conferred in section 26 of the Act would not be sufficient to prevent public disorder and there must be evidence of the grounds upon which they held this belief and the evidence must be of public disorder in the district concerned. The authority must publish notice of its intention to ban demonstration in the district and if it claims that it was not practicable to publish such notice, there must be evidence to show why this was so. All interested parties must be given an opportunity to make representations about the proposed ban and those parties must be provided with reasons why the authority has decided to go ahead with the ban despite the representations that it has received.